Richard Dreyfuss Travels from Holywood to Docuwood to Save Democracy



Richard Dreyfuss was at the SILVERDOCS Film Festival this June, but he wasn't there to promote his appearance in a new movie. Rather, he was one of us - all filmmakers pitching our proposals to make documentary films. Dreyfuss came from Hollywood to Docuwood (As the LA Times has dubbed the Washington, DC area - the third largest production market) because he is a man with a mission, a man who wants to create his "opus."

"America is in danger of losing our democracy," said the Oscar-winning actor. In a Scene4 Magazine interview by Arthur Kanegis at the Silverdocs at the festival, Dreyfuss shook his head, incredulous: "To think that that we in this generation would see our free press, the fundamental pillar of our democracy, go away like this One could not possibly foresee it. And we can't let it happen."

"We think we had the media we had a few years ago," Dreyfuss said, "But media has been consolidated. Although it's five different companies - it's not. It's one company. We don't get the details of the real news. We're not offered the information to process."

"Today's media lacks any sense that it has a separate mandate, that it is independent and that government has no authority over it. This is crazy; it's not the way we were raised."

Dreyfuss was one of several key filmmakers pitching to The Democracy Project pitch panel. The project, a consortium of Canadian, British (BBC), French, Japanese, Danish and other broadcasters, chose SILVERDOCS as their exclusive session location to hear US-based film pitches. They intend to fund a slate of ten films which will be broadcast around the world.

You can read the entire interview in the current (July) issue of Scene4 - International Magazine of Performing Arts and Media with over 140,000 readers worldwide. The issuealso offers an exclusive interview by Catherine Honig with San Francisco Prima Ballerina, Lorena Feijoo along with reviews and commentary in Portuges, Italian and Thai as well as English.





Richard Dreyfuss Travels from Holywood to Docuwood to Save Democracy